


Rules

by VeryMauve



Category: Original Work
Genre: Daddy Issues, Dysfunctional Relationships, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Older Man/Younger Man, Rough Sex, Trans Male Character, Trans/Trans Relationship, Violence, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 02:38:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16053692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeryMauve/pseuds/VeryMauve





	1. Chapter 1

You know a boy’s got you, when you begin to break your own rules for him. Tony should have been off-limits right from the start, I’m well aware of that. My first rule is to never pursue anyone who works for the same employer, let alone in the same office. Years ago, when I was in the grip of testosterone fever, I ignored that rule and paid the price. I had a brief fling with one of our apprentices, a bright but spiteful boy with a pretty mouth and a charming laugh, and when it inevitably went sour, I ended up paying him a little over two months’ wages to keep that pretty mouth shut. That was a decade ago, and since then I’ve adhered to my rules faithfully. Two perfunctory promotions and years of annual pay increments have made me comfortable enough that these days, if I want the company of a fresh-faced seventeen-year-old, I can simply pay one.

Tony was no ingénue. Admittedly, I initially thought he was quite young, but that’s the curse of the fledgling trans man. At first glance, my colleagues read him as a young butch woman, and then as a teenage boy after he was formally introduced to us. The handful of co-workers who had been around since my early years almost certainly understood the situation, and a few of them gave me heavy-handedly significant glances when Tony was brought over to say hello. One colleague took it upon himself to find out the boy’s backstory and report all the key details to me, but whether he was playing matchmaker or simply thought Tony would benefit from being mentored by a fellow trans man, I’ve no idea.

In any case, I knew better than to get involved with the boy, so for the next few weeks I kept my distance. We were only a couple of desks away from each other, but there was very little overlap in our work, so it was easy enough to limit our interactions. What wasn’t easy, though, was ignoring him. I’m simply not capable of keeping my mind on my work if there’s a good-looking young man in the room. It’s just not how I’m built. So yes, I said barely a word to Tony for his first month in the department, but my eyes returned to him again and again. It was like having a bright light beside me, one which I knew I shouldn’t look at directly, but which I just couldn’t resist. I came away from the office each day slightly dazzled.

I suppose I’m lucky that he wasn’t my usual type. Bottle-blondes are my weakness, but Tony was dark-haired and dark-eyed. I wouldn’t have let him anywhere near a bottle of peroxide, because his hair was perfect as it was. Deep mahogany, almost black, and wonderfully glossy. A little too shortly cropped, perhaps, but understandably so. The mouth and cheeks were textbook ephebe, lush and red like a Caravaggio boy, but it was his eyes that really sold me. Shadowed underneath, but sparkling, positively glittering with life. He looked simultaneously weary and effervescent; he looked quite a lot like I did, at his age.

Of course, handsome boys are usually quite aware of their own appeal, and they’re perfectly able to identify a lust-struck admirer when they see one. Tony seemed to understand right away why I was avoiding him, and in response he began to toy with me. It was a perverse game of cat-and-mouse. The more I feigned indifference, the closer Tony stuck to me. He began offering to make drinks for me, fetching my photocopying unbidden, and if he needed directions to this department or that, he unfailingly came to me with the question. All with a mocking smile on his rosy lips. Eventually it became so blatant that even his clueless supervisor noticed.

“Do you know,” the woman said to me, while Tony was out of the room, “I think our new starter wishes he’d got a job in your team instead of mine.”

“Oh, I’m sure he doesn’t. No-one would volunteer to work on this nonsense.” I gestured at the document on my screen.

“I think he’d do any kind of work at all,” she said, “if it was under you.”

“Hmm,” I murmured.

“Well, I suppose it’s not that surprising, he probably gets on better with men.” She lowered her voice. “Between you and me, James, he’s had a difficult life, that one. Sheila in Finance lives next door to him and his mum. There’s no dad in the picture, and it was a messy split, very unpleasant for all of them.” She tutted and shook her head.

I should have rebuked her for gossiping, but I was distracted by the dozen alarm bells suddenly going off in my mind.


	2. Chapter 2

As time went on, it became increasingly hard to maintain the façade. Nine out of ten times, when Tony cracked a joke or made small-talk, I shut him down quickly and firmly. But every so often I slipped, and threw him a smile or a laugh or a question which only encouraged him to try harder. Each time that façade cracked, his face lit up with a mixture of triumph and genuine happiness. It was maddening; I should have despised him for toying with me, but whenever I saw that earnest smile on his lips, my annoyance evaporated and I was left with pure desire.

I was always careful to avoid being alone with the boy. If I saw him heading towards the lift, I took the stairs, and vice versa. The stockroom was a particular hazard, because he quite often followed me in there after a few seconds, and I developed a habit of grabbing whatever I needed and going back to my desk as soon as physically possible. I even began to use the toilets on the floor above us, because I absolutely did not want to be confronted by Tony’s smiling face in front of a row of beckoningly empty cubicles. But it was all futile. If a boy like that sets his sights on you, you’ve no chance. No chance at all.

I’m not a social person, and my colleagues were quite used to me declining all invitations to office lunches and nights out. My dislike of Christmas festivities was a running joke, so Tony had several weeks of advance notice that I would be the sole person manning the office on the afternoon of the team’s Christmas buffet. For weeks, the boy behaved as if he intended to go along with the rest of the team to that wretched restaurant. He even came to work dressed for the occasion, in a dark shirt and an iridescent shot-silk tie, the office party uniform of every twentysomething man. And then, half an hour before they were due to set off, he claimed he’d developed a headache which was simultaneously mild enough to allow him to work, and severe enough to make prospect of the noisy restaurant intolerable.

To his credit, Tony quietly got on with his work for the first half hour or so, but I wasn’t inclined to give him any credit at all. His presence alone was enough to infuriate me. I sat and seethed, looking at the paperwork in front of me but seeing nothing except that rosy smirking mouth, those glittering brown eyes. Indignation filled me. How dare he waltz into my workplace and jeopardise a comfortable situation, how dare he get under my skin like this, who did he think he was? And was he even attracted to me, or was it simply the thrill of being desired? How dare he, I kept thinking. How _dare_ he.

“James,” he said, “can I ask you something?”

“What?” I snapped, glaring at him.

“Never mind, it’s nothing.” His cheeks seemed to redden just slightly.

“Then get on with your work.”

“It’s just…”

A kinder man would have softened his tone. Instead I stared at him and said, “Come on, then. Spit it out. Just _what_?”

“Well, have I done something wrong?”

I didn’t answer. I just kept glaring at him.

“Because everyone else is alright with me, but you seem…”

“What?” I turned around in my chair and faced him, with my arms folded. “What do I seem, exactly?”

At this point any normal boy would have backed off. I wasn’t Tony’s manager, of course, but I was a good twenty years older and several grades higher up the ladder than him, and while I couldn’t have sacked him, I could certainly have made his life miserable if I felt like it. But Tony was full of indignation too. His youth and position might have delayed the outburst, but he was seething, just as I was.

“Stuck up, actually, is what I was going to say.” His voice grew louder and more arch as he picked up steam. “Like you’ve got a problem with me, but you won’t come out and say it. You look at me like I’m dirt. I can tell, you know. I’m not stupid. So what is it? What have I done? And god help me, if you say anything about my _lifestyle choices_ I’ll have HR all over you before you can say ‘constructive dismissal’.”

I looked at Tony, unable to reply, while my idea of him slowly ground its way through a painful 180-degree pivot. The cat-and-mouse game I’d been playing seemed to have suddenly developed a different set of rules. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that he’d been sincere and earnest all along, but I believed the anger on his face, the pain in his voice. He might have been playing with me, but he wasn’t play-acting now.

“Well.” I rubbed the back of my neck and laughed. “I wish I’d had your guts when I was your age, Tony.”

He snorted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I didn’t stand up for myself when I was younger. I left my first job, in fact,” I said, exaggerating the truth a little for emphasis, “because they didn’t like my ‘lifestyle choices’.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not the same. Don’t think you know what it’s like just because you’re gay.”

“I’m not just gay.” I smiled at him, the first genuine smile I’d ever directed at the boy, which blossomed into a smirk as I realised I finally had the upper hand.

“What?”

“I’m in the same situation as you, Tony.”

“What?” He stared at me, and slowly his eyes gave me the once over.

“Well, I’ve _been_ in the same situation. I’m a bit further on, shall we say.”

“You mean…”

“Yes.” We were dancing around the words as if the office walls might overhear us, but I didn’t want to force the issue.

“Oh.” He nodded slowly. “I didn’t realise.”

I smiled again. “Quite.”

“So… Why are you avoiding me, then? D’you think you’re going to get found out if you’re seen talking to me?”

“Oh, hardly,” I laughed. “In any case, I’m not avoiding you.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No.” I smiled, but it was the taut, artificial one I’d been deploying for months. “Perhaps you’re a little over-sensitive about these things. I know it’s a difficult time, I remember what it was like—all those hormones whizzing around, all the mood swings, the short fuse, biting people’s heads off over nothing. Like being a teenager all over again.”

“Yeah…” He frowned slightly. “I guess so.”

“Well, now we’ve got all that cleared up,” I said, turning back to my computer, “shall we get on with some work?”


	3. Chapter 3

Of course, nothing was cleared up. For me, it only further complicated the matter. A small part of me had hoped that by disclosing, I might have killed the boy’s interest in me. I had no such luck. If anything, he seemed more determined than ever to get close to me. In reassuring Tony that I wasn’t avoiding him, I suppose I’d inadvertently encouraged him. And of course, now we had a shared confidence. Now our eyes met whenever the office conversation strayed onto gender or sexuality, or more usually some garbled tabloid-fuelled mixture of the two, and in Tony’s eyes I saw my own suppressed rage, reflected and amplified.

After the Christmas break, his supervisor began to step up her attempts to palm Tony off onto me. I suspected that the original decision to hire him had occurred over her head, and that she’d never wanted Tony on her team in the first place. She was happy to sign his leave sheet and allocate work to him, but beyond that she evidently wanted nothing to do with the boy. Questions about the work? Ask James. Need a sounding board for a new idea? Talk to James. Having trouble juggling deadlines? See if James can help you prioritise. And Tony, of course, was quite willing to go along with it. He can’t have been unaware of his supervisor’s motives, but I think he was simply happy to take advantage of her dislike for him. Why wouldn’t be he? It delivered him into my lap several times a day, after all.

Every March, there was a day-long conference held in the nearest big city, which I always looked forward to attending. I didn’t give a fig for the content, but it was an excuse to get out of the office, out of our wretched backwater town, to spend a day somewhere more cosmopolitan. The lunch breaks were particularly entertaining, since there was a large park nearby which was usually stocked with much prettier boys than I ever saw back home. Sometimes I’d arrange a quick hookup for the lunch break, and spend an hour with some random boy in one of the cheap hotels near the conference centre. They were furtive, rushed, unsatisfying encounters, but they were still an improvement over what I could get on the average lunch break back home.

Rather predictably, Tony’s supervisor decided that it would be good for the boy to come with me to the conference. It would provide networking opportunities, she said. I shouldn’t have agreed. I knew she just wanted to get both queers out of the office for the day, but I felt so aggrieved on the boy’s behalf, so protective of him, that my first instinct was to say, “Fine, if you don’t want him around, then I don’t see why he should have to tolerate _your_ presence.” I clamped down on that instinct, smiled, and agreed as politely as I could.

It was that sense of vicarious resentment that made me offer Tony a lift to the conference centre, when a sensible man would have let the boy make his own way there. I offered to pick him up at the end of his road, but he insisted that I should park right outside his house, or rather his mother’s house, so that she could see him getting into the car.

“She doesn’t trust me,” he said, as he closed the passenger door behind him. “Always thinks I’m up to no good.”

“And the sight of you getting into an older man’s car is reassuring to her?”

“Comparatively, yeah.” He grinned at me. “I’ve done worse.”

“Alright, Marlon Brando,” I said, “fasten the seatbelt so we can get going.”

“See?” He laughed. “You’re the type who takes safety precautions, that just proves my Mum’s right to trust you.”

 As I drove, I tried not to think about the fact that Tony had an anxious mother worrying about him at home. I kept half my mind on the road, and the other half on Tony’s charms. He was dressed more smartly than usual, in pristine black trousers, a charcoal-grey shirt, and a very sober blue tie. On other boys the outfit would have looked starched or demure, but on Tony it simply emphasised his physique. The shirt clung to his biceps and shoulders, and the trousers hugged the broad muscles of his thighs.

“Do you work out, Tony?” I said, hoping to distract myself with a banal conversation about protein bars.

“Yeah, of course. Got to make sure I get good results when I have top surgery next year.”

“Oh, which surgeon are you going for?”

Internally I breathed a sigh of relief. At his age I’d happily talk the ear off any trans man I encountered, and if they asked me about my medical transition plans then I could keep going for hours. Luckily Tony seemed to be the same way. He explained at length how he’d chosen his surgeon, how far he’d have to travel to get there, where he’d stay after surgery, on and on for what felt like an hour, and the entire conversation was blissfully free of innuendo. When I mentioned that I’d gone overseas for my top surgery, that sealed the deal. He peppered me with dozens of questions, especially about the more antiquated elements of my surgery experience. When I told him that back then we were all instructed not to raise our arms above shoulder level after surgery, he was beside himself with amusement.

“I can just see you doing the T-Rex arms!” he laughed.

“Yes, well, you might think it’s very funny,” I said, trying not to smile, “but I ended up with a frozen shoulder on my right side, which put a bit of a dampener on enjoying my newfound freedom.”

“Sorry,” he said, still chuckling.

“Just be thankful things have moved on since then.”

“I am, don’t worry.”

My eyes were on the road, but in the corner of my vision I could see him looking at me, gazing at my face in silence. I wondered if he was trying to imagine what I’d looked like all those years ago, back when I’d been in the same position as him. Perhaps I looked too ancient now to have ever been young and insecure.

“James,” he said, suddenly, “how long did it take you to grow that beard?”

“Hmm… Well, I only grew it a few years ago, but I probably had enough growth for a full beard by about six or seven years on T.”

“I want a beard like that one day,” he said, a little more softly. “Not soon, though. When I’m your age.”

I glanced at him, expecting to see a smirk on his lips, but he seemed perfectly serious.

“Beards look stupid on young guys,” he carried on, “they only look good if you’re old enough to do the whole hot Daddy thing.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Forty-something,” he said, without hesitation. “Definitely old enough to do the hot Daddy thing.”

And _there_ it was, the smirk I’d anticipated. Evidently he couldn’t sustain an earnest attitude for long. But it was too much, over the line, and I needed to shut him down.

“That’s enough of that, Tony.” I kept my expression neutral and calm. “I know we’re outside of the office, but let’s try to keep it professional, okay?”

He gave a scornful little laugh. “What’s the matter, don’t you like younger men?”

I should have said no. I should have pretended to be monogamously involved, or celibate, or asexual. I should have said anything that would have closed the door on the flirtation.

“What I like,” I said, “is boys who don’t distract me while I’m driving.”

Tony was quiet for the rest of the drive, and even when we went into the conference centre he was relatively subdued. He followed me meekly into the hall, and sat where I indicated, without a word of complaint. I chose a table at the back of the room, of course. I had no intention of putting Tony anywhere near the front, where the facilitators could overhear his remarks. He was quiet now, but I knew it couldn’t last forever.


	4. Chapter 4

In fact, he made it all the way to the mid-morning intermission without a single inappropriate comment. By the time he reverted to type, the tension was almost unbearable. It was like waiting for an over-inflated balloon to pop; when he finally snapped, I felt as much relief as annoyance.

“Where’s the toilets?” he said, as the other delegates at our table wandered off to refill their coffees.

“Out the door, turn left, and then turn right just before the stairs. The men’s is at the end of the corridor, and there’s a unisex disabled toilet on the opposite side if you’d prefer a bit of privacy.”

“Will you show me the way? I’m rubbish with directions, I’ll get lost if I go on my own.”

“Oh, alright,” I said, tutting. “Come on, then.”

He followed me out of the hall, and when I glanced over my shoulder he was smiling that same smile, the one that had driven me mad for months in the office. The one that said, _I know you want me_.

“Here we are,” I said, pointing at the door. “Do you want me to wait, or can you find your own way back?”

He pouted a little. “Aren’t you coming in?”

I couldn’t help laughing. “You’re completely shameless, aren’t you?”

“You’re so uptight…” Tony shoved his hands in his pockets and grinned at me. “Wouldn’t it be more fun than going back in there for more Death by PowerPoint?”

“Give it up, Tony,” I said, turning around. “It’s not going to happen.”

As I walked away I heard him mutter, “That’s what _you_ think.”

I went back into the hall and got myself another coffee, drank the whole thing in one shot, and then poured myself another refill. The guy standing next to me at the drinks table laughed and said, “Late night?”

I forced myself to smile and laugh. “Year-end rush, you know how it is.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” he said wearily, and went back to his own table.

What had kept me up last night wasn’t overtime, of course. It was thinking about Tony. I was awake until one o’clock, alternately planning how to handle things, and drifting off into fantasies about what I really wanted to do to the boy.

Tony still hadn’t returned when the second session began. I assumed he was sulking, and when another person at the table remarked that we were short a group member, I smiled and told them he’d had to take an urgent phone call. But as the brainstorming activity progressed, I started to worry. He’d been gone more than twenty minutes. Perhaps he’d run into trouble in the toilets. Tony passed quite well most of the time, but sometimes his voice sounded just a little bit too high, a little bit too adolescent, and a close observer might have been able to guess. Maybe someone had noticed, and cornered Tony somewhere to berate him. But no, surely if someone cornered him, the boy wouldn’t take it quietly. He’d argue back, and probably get himself into a fight. We’d have heard the commotion by now. He couldn’t be in trouble, so perhaps he was ill. Those toilets were quite out of the way, so if you were taken ill there, it would be some time before anyone found you.

I took out my phone, and quickly texted him, demanding to know where he was. Perhaps I should never have exchanged numbers with him, but it seemed reasonable since I was giving him a lift. Another five minutes went by, with no response.

I texted him again: _WHERE ARE YOU?_

Again, no response.

I couldn’t take it. I was worried, but also furious. How dare he disrupt what should have been an uneventful, easy day? How dare he worry me like this? I quietly excused myself, smiling but seething inside, and walked as quickly to the toilets as I could without drawing undue attention. The corridor was completely silent. No staff or visitors in sight or within earshot. No sounds of a distant argument, or of someone being ill. I began to wonder whether Tony had simply left, if he’d gone home or gone sightseeing in the city, but I had to be sure. I opened the outer door of the toilets and went inside.

And there, leaning against the counter, playing with his phone, was Tony.

“Took you long enough,” he said, looking up. “I’ve been waiting ages.”

“You…” I hissed. I wanted to shout at him, to slap his insolent face, but I kept my hands by my sides and my voice restrained. “What do you think you’re playing at?”

He grinned, put his phone away, and said, “Getting what I want.”

He came towards me, close enough that I could see the flush of excitement on his cheeks, and it was only then that I realised how evenly matched we were physically. He was perhaps an inch shorter than me, and just as stocky. He really did look like a younger version of me, down to the cocky arch of his eyebrow and the defiant jut of his chin.

“What are you waiting for?” he said, locking eyes with me. “You’re going to do it, so why don’t you just—”

“Shut your mouth,” I said, grabbing hold of his arms. He didn’t even flinch as I bundled him into the nearest cubicle and locked the door. He was still smiling as I slammed his back against the wall.

“I told you,” he laughed.

“And I told you,” I said, keeping my voice low, “to shut that mouth.”

“What if I don’t? Are you going to shut it for me?”

My hands gripped his shoulders. I barely had to push at all, and he sank to his knees with another mocking laugh.

“You could have had this six months ago,” he said, as he unbuckled my belt. “You old guys really know how to waste time…”

I pushed his head down and kept it there, one hand on the stubble of the back of his neck, and one hand on the glossy cropped crown, and all of the frustrations of the last six months poured out as I fucked his mouth, and at last, _at last_ the boy was actually quiet, at last I couldn’t hear that laugh or see that smile.

As soon as I was done, it hit me. Ten years since I’d made a mistake like this. Ten years down the drain. If anyone at work found out, it was all over.

“This…” My voice was hoarse, and my breath was still ragged. My hands were shaking as I fastened my trousers. “This was a mistake, Tony.”

He looked up at me, wet-mouthed and smiling. “Yeah, sure.”

I stepped backwards, fumbled the cubicle door open, and went to the sinks on auto-pilot. I couldn’t look at him, but I knew he was watching me, still on his knees, still smiling.

“Listen, Tony,” I said, as I dried my hands, “this shouldn’t have happened, it was…”

“A momentary lapse of judgement,” he laughed, “is how they usually put it in the papers.”

“It can’t happen again.” I was already taking my wallet out, and the boy’s eyes widened as I took out a couple of notes.

“Are you _paying_ me?” I could see him in the mirror, smirking and shaking his head.

“For the train home,” I said, and put the notes down on the counter.

“Hang on, are you leaving me here?” His volume rose, and he grabbed hold of my arm. “You can’t just leave me here, James.”

Anger flared in me, sparked by the familiarity in his voice. I shoved him away. “You’ll have to make your own way back.”

“You’re not going to leave me here like this,” he said, halfway to shouting now. “Don’t you walk off as if you haven’t heard me!”

“Alright, fine,” I muttered, dropping another couple of notes onto the counter. “Get a taxi then.”

“Don’t think you can just throw money at me and walk away, James!” he called after me, as I pushed the outer door open. “James! _James!_ ”

I could hear him shouting my name all the way to the exit. I half-expected him to chase after me, and when he didn’t, I assumed that perhaps a public confrontation was a step too far, even for Tony. I don’t think I’ve ever been more wrong in my life.

I was halfway down the street when I realised that I couldn’t just leave him there. What if he went back into the conference on his own? God knows what he’d say if I left him there unsupervised. I couldn’t leave, so instead I waited in a side-street, where I could watch the conference centre entrance without been spotted. I waited until I saw Tony leaving the building, with his head down and his phone in hand, and then I followed him at a distance. He had headphones in, so I could probably have walked a few feet behind him undetected, but I kept my distance. Getting too close to him was the last thing I wanted now. I just followed him, all the way to the train station, and it was only once I’d seen him buy a ticket and walk through the barriers that I finally relaxed.

Of course, it was tempting to go straight home, but I decided it was wiser to go back to the conference centre. Foremost in my mind was the risk of blackmail, but there was also the chance that Tony might decide to reveal our involvement out of sheer spite. If he did, then I’d need as much evidence as I could get that nothing untoward happened, so I went back to the conference, and sat back down with my group as if all was well. When someone asked where my young colleague was, I told them he’d been taken ill, and I implied quite heavily that he was hungover. The middle-aged management types tutted and rolled their eyes, apparently happy to believe me without question.

The rest of the day passed in a daze for me. I couldn’t think of anything but Tony, what he might do, what he might say. Would he come to work the next day? Would he quit with no notice? That would be a neat ending to the affair, I thought, but an unlikely one. He’d probably call in sick for a few days, and then come back to work once his ego had recovered. Rejection stings at any age, but in my twenties I took such things very hard. I would have needed a week to lick my wounds, at least. Tony might be more resilient than I had been, I thought, but probably not by much.

When I got home that night, I found I’d had a couple of text messages while I was driving. My heart leapt into my throat. It would be Tony, I assumed, demanding money. I started to wonder how much he’d ask for, and how much I’d be happy to pay. Perhaps if I paid for his silence, we could keep seeing each other outside work. He’d been squeamish about taking money, but perhaps his reluctance would fade when he realised how lucrative an arrangement like that could be for him. _Yes_ , I thought, _keep seeing the boy, but keep him at arm’s length_.

The texts weren’t from Tony, however. It was just one of my friends asking whether I felt like going out for a drink, and then texting again to say he’d changed his mind as he’d got someone coming around later on. Normally I would have wished him a good night, but I was in a foul mood, and I switched my phone off without responding. I wasn’t fit for company, in any case. I wanted to be left alone to brood and plan.


	5. Chapter 5

When Tony arrived at the office the next morning as normal, it didn’t worry me. I wasn’t flustered, because I’d thought things through quite thoroughly, and I knew what I had to do. All I needed to do was to talk to the boy privately, apologise for leaving him high and dry, and then sweet-talk him into a regular arrangement. Optimistically, I thought that perhaps he wouldn’t even insist on money. He’d seemed insulted by it the previous day, after all. Perhaps he really just wanted the attention.

Try as I might, though, I couldn’t get him alone. In most respects Tony was his usual self. His manner was cheerful and spirited, and he flirted relentlessly with me, as he’d been doing for months, but gone were the flimsy excuses to be alone with me. He made no attempt at all, and he evaded all of mine. He fetched my coffee and my photocopying, he chattered incessantly at me about this and that, and he even took to sitting opposite me, claiming that the lights over his old seat triggered migraines. He seemed more enamoured of me than ever, except that he’d completely stopped following me into secluded locations. I was free to visit the stationery room without looking over my shoulder to check if he was shadowing me. I could work overtime without worrying that he’d find an excuse to stay late. I could visit any toilet in the building quite comfortably, because if he saw me heading towards the same one as him, he would actually turn around and walk away.

I was absolutely safe from his attentions, and thoroughly miserable.

Usually I would have dealt with the frustration in the obvious way, by arranging as many hookups as I could fit into my schedule, but somehow the idea had no appeal at all to me now. My libido wasn’t dead, far from it, but I had no desire for anyone but Tony. It was like a strange sickness that robbed me of my appetite for every food except the one that was out of reach. I wondered if I was going mad. Even my friends noticed I wasn’t myself.

“Boy problems,” Angela said, smirking at me over the top of her cocktail. “I know that look a mile off.”

“You know me too well,” I said, wondering if she could even guess the half of it.

“Let’s have the gory details, then. What is it this time, one who’s turned you down, or one who won’t leave you alone?”

I sipped my drink. “Bit of both, really.”

“Sounds like trouble.” She laughed and shook her head. “Which means there’s absolutely zero point in me advising you to steer clear, doesn’t it?”

“Probably.” I shrugged, and changed the topic, but I knew she was right. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Even sitting in a gay bar packed with young men, my mind was fixed on Tony. I had to talk to him. No matter what, I had to get him alone and explain why I’d rejected him, why I’d panicked, why he really couldn’t blame me for what I’d done. If I could just talk to him, I was sure he’d forget whatever resentment he held for me, and we could pick up where we’d left off, but more discreetly this time.

I made up my mind that night. In the office there were no opportunities to be alone with Tony, and I certainly couldn’t wait until the next time we were sent out to an event together, so I only had one option left. I had to catch him outside his house.

One afternoon I left work early, pretending to have a dentist appointment, and drove to Tony’s house. He was working til five that night, so I had plenty of time, but I still rushed a little. I wanted to be sure I’d be in position long before he arrived home. It was wasted effort, though, because I was still sitting in my car waiting for him at half-past six, when he finally arrived. I saw him from a distance, walking down the road, with his headphones in and his phone in his hand, as always. He only looked up occasionally, so he was almost at his front gate before he spotted my car. He locked eyes with me and slowed his pace, but he didn’t stop walking.

I got out of the car and crossed the road to approach him. As I walked towards him, he finally stopped, took his headphones out, and put his phone away.

“Tony,” I said, quietly, “can we talk?”

He had his hands in his pockets and a slight smile on his lips. “Sure. What about?”

“Not here.” I glanced up and down the street. We were alone, but god knows how many curtain-twitchers were watching from behind the nets.

“Where, then?” He smirked. “Your place?”

“No,” I said, perhaps a little too vehemently. “Somewhere neutral. Somewhere we can talk in private.”

“I don’t know… I’m pretty tired, I can’t really be bothered.” He didn’t look tired at all, he looked thoroughly amused. I wanted to grab him and shake him.

“ _Tony_ ,” I said, trying very hard not to raise my voice. “ _Please_.”

“Oh, alright,” he said, shrugging. “Where are we going?”

I had no idea. My house was obviously off-limits, and taking him to a pub or a café would be asking for trouble. “Let’s just drive, alright?”

He laughed. “Classy.”

But he got into the car all the same, and sat beside me, smiling and silent, until we’d pulled out of his street and onto the main road. I had no idea where I intended to drive to, but I suppose I thought that as long as he was in the car, I had the upper hand. I could keep him there until I’d finished explaining myself, until he understood me.

“What d’you want to talk about, then?”

“What happened the other day—”

“You mean the bit where I sucked your cock in the toilets, or the bit where you ran away afterwards?”

I glanced at him. He was smirking, but I could see a lingering bit of hurt in his eyes. “Look, I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“Leaving you like that. I panicked, but that’s no excuse. I’m sorry.”

“Damn right it’s no excuse.” Now the smirk was gone. “One thing you’ve got to be clear on, is that I don’t like people walking out on me, James. Don’t leave me like that again,” he said, “or you’ll be sorry.”

“I won’t,” I said, and in the moment I really did mean it.

“Good,” he said, nodding. “Because I’ve warned you now, and if you do it again you’ve got no right to complain about what happens next.”

“You’re right,” I said, but I wasn’t really listening. I was trying to decide whether to drive to a hotel and have him then and there, or whether it was a better idea to take him straight back to his house and let him lick his wounds a while longer before I made another move on him.

“Okay then,” he said, as if he was reading my mind, “in that case why don’t you take me somewhere _really_ private, and you can make it up to me properly?”

The first evening we spent in a hotel together was a very rushed, no-frills affair, as spontaneous trysts usually are. I had nothing with me except the little stash of lube and condoms I keep in the car, and besides, I’d built up so much repressed lust that I really didn’t have the patience for anything other than straightforwardly fucking the boy. The sight of him bent over on the cheap hotel bed, naked from the waist down, lube and sweat glistening on the fine dark hairs of his thighs, it was all too much for me. This time I at least had the foresight to take him in hand and make sure he finished first, and quickly at that, because the feeling of his body underneath me seemed to summon up the kind of hair trigger I thought I’d left behind in my twenties.

“God, you’ve got a temper,” he said afterwards, wincing a bit as he straightened up. “You went at it so hard I didn’t know if you were trying to fuck me or break my hips!”

I laughed, genuinely amused and genuinely happy, for the first time in months. “That’s a bit rich coming from you, Tony.”

“Are you accusing me of having anger issues?” he called, from the bathroom.

“That and a lot more besides,” I laughed.

“True,” he said, sticking his head through the doorway, “but it’s charming because it’s me, right?”

And he was right, he was completely right. In that moment I felt that he was utterly charming, and that every risk I was taking was absolutely worthwhile. I was happy, and I really thought that happiness would last.


	6. Chapter 6

We established a routine very quickly. Twice a week, I’d book a hotel room somewhere cheap and out-of-the-way, and Tony would make his own way there. I didn’t want to be seen picking him up or dropping him off, so instead I gave him enough money to cover getting a taxi there and back. What he actually did with the money was up to him; if he wanted to get the bus and treat the taxi money as a bonus, that was fine by me. I was careful, though, never to imply that the cash might be payment for sex.

Sex wasn’t enough for either of us, in any case. I wanted to spend time with him, to laze around and talk, and I rapidly tired of Travelodges and Premier Inns. I wanted to take the boy out, but of course I couldn’t risk being seen with him outside work. Eventually I decided that the only solution was to take Tony out of town, somewhere we could relax together without worrying about being spotted. The boy jumped at the chance, with one condition.

“I’m not going in any gay bars,” he said, surprisingly vehemently. “No way.”

“Why not?” I could guess, but I didn’t want to put words in his mouth.

“Why d’you think? Because firstly, if I try to go in any pub I’m going to get carded, and secondly, if I go somewhere gay I’m going to get read as a butch girl, aren’t I?”

“Of course you aren’t,” I said, rubbing his back, “you’re being silly. You know you pass wonderfully.”

He frowned. “You’re just saying that.”

“I’m not,” I said, “but if you don’t want to go to gay bars, that’s fine. Where would you prefer to go?”

He lay back on the bed and grinned. “I’ve got a list.”

And he did. He’d clearly been thinking about the question for some time. Luckily for my bank balance his whims were fairly low-end. Every Friday night, we’d meet in the centre of a nearby city, and eat together at whatever fast-food place appealed to him that week. The meal would be followed by a film at a multiplex—sometimes the same film two weeks in a row if was something that had particularly captured Tony’s imagination—and then finally a night in a hotel together. For that last part, I’d extracted a compromise from him. He wouldn’t go in a gay bar, but he would at least let me book a hotel in the village. In fact, I think being around other gay couples gave the boy a thrill, although he’d never admit it.

With the exception of the hotel, Tony’s wishlist was more like that of a child than a twenty-three-year-old, but I was happy to indulge him since he seemed well aware of the dynamic he was creating.

“I bet,” he said, one night in Pizza Hut, “that everyone in here thinks you’re my dad.”

“Well, that’s the price you pay for getting involved with a fossil,” I laughed. “Does it bother you?”

“No,” he said, and then more quietly, “I like it.”

I smiled. “I thought you might say that.”

In hindsight I can see that what Tony really needed was the kind of father figure who would never dream of seducing a junior colleague. But of course, in life we very rarely get what we need.

Eventually those Friday nights began to spill over into Saturday mornings. At first, we’d go home separately before breakfast, but over time it became increasingly hard to say goodbye to Tony. I began putting it off, inventing reasons to prolong the trip, and Tony went along with this cheerfully. Sometimes we spent Saturday morning shopping—Tony spent most of his spare cash on videogames that he usually bought online, but he was more than happy to let me pay over the odds to buy him whatever game he wanted from a physical shop—and sometimes, if the weather was nice, we’d go for a walk in a nearby park. That was where it happened.

The chances of us bumping into a colleague out of town were probably quite slim, but every outing was a roll of the dice, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised when our luck eventually ran out. I didn’t even really recognise the woman, but she clearly recognised me. It was just a brief moment, just a brief hello and a few scraps of polite small-talk, but she looked at Tony and then looked at me, in a way that could have meant anything at all. Perhaps she didn’t recognise the boy, and she was wondering whether I had a son no-one knew about. Perhaps she recognised him, and assumed we were together for some kind of work event. Or perhaps she recognised us both, and put two and two together with ease.

“Who was that?” Tony said, looking over his shoulder as the woman walked away.

“Someone from work,” I said, “but don’t worry, she didn’t seem to recognise you. I doubt anything will come of it.”

“I don’t mind,” he laughed. “It’s exciting, all this sneaking around.”

It was a game to Tony, but to me it was deadly serious. I couldn’t keep taking these chances, not any more. That encounter in the park was a warning shot, and I’d have been foolish to ignore it. I had to eliminate the risk. It seemed straightforward to me; I couldn’t keep seeing a boy I worked with, therefore Tony had to leave the company.

“It’s rattled you, hasn’t it?” he said, elbowing me in the side.

“Well,” I said, “it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.”

It was trivially easy to orchestrate Tony’s dismissal. We often worked late together, and the boy was seemingly incapable of ever locking his computer when he was away from his desk, so I had endless opportunities to slip small errors into his work. Plus, Tony depended on me for advice about the work due to his supervisor’s hands-off approach, which meant that I could easily give him subtly incorrect instructions—always verbally, never in writing, and never with witnesses—which would look to an outsider like proof of his inattention, since I was the old hand and he was the newcomer. Within a few months, Tony’s supervisor was having regular meetings with him to discuss the problems with his performance, which I heard all about second-hand, because of course Tony spent a good part of each Friday evening complaining about work.

As it became clear that Tony was heading towards being fired, I sometimes wished I could reveal my part in it all to him. He’d taken an immense risk by getting involved with me, and the consequences were becoming very real. _Next time_ , I wanted to say to him, _you’ll be more careful before starting an office romance with someone senior, won’t you?_ But I doubted he’d learn anything from the experience even then. Some boys exist in a permanent state of naivety, constantly bewildered as the world has its way with them again and again, never learning from their mistakes. You simply cannot help them.


	7. Chapter 7

The axe fell rather more quickly than I expected. That was a miscalculation on my part. I’d underestimated the extent to which Tony’s supervisor wanted to get rid of him. I knew she disliked having him around, but I didn’t expect her to rush the dismissal process. I suppose I thought she had slightly more sense than that.

I was in a meeting when she gave Tony the news, and as he left the office immediately afterwards, I thought he’d gone home early as he sometimes did on Mondays. There was a fortnightly trans youth group he often went to straight from work, so I assumed that was where he’d gone, and when I didn’t hear from him for the rest of the evening I didn’t think anything of it. I assumed he was in a community centre with his little friends, whinging about hormone levels and GIC waiting lists and the rest of it.

Then at eleven o’clock my phone rang, and I knew right away it would be him.

“James…” His voice was hoarse, as if he’d been shouting or crying. “James, can you come and get me?”

“Of course,” I said, “where are you?”

“I’m in the park, obviously,” he mumbled, clearly drunk.

“Which park?”

He gave me the name, and I recognised it vaguely. Not somewhere I’d want a young man of mine to spend a sober night, let alone a drunk one.

“Alright, I’m on my way,” I said, picking up my car keys. “Has something happened, Tony?”

“I can’t go home,” he said, “I can’t tell my Mum it’s happened again…”

“It’s alright,” I reassured him, “it’s going to be fine, I promise. Whatever’s happened, we’ll sort it out together, okay?”

“Okay…” he said, and hung up.

It took fifteen minutes to get to the park, and I spent each one of those minutes worrying. I hadn’t intended the dismissal to hit Tony that hard. I wanted him out of my workplace, but I didn’t want him distraught. Of course, he couldn’t have continued working there, but what I wanted was for Tony read the signs and start looking for another job. That’s what I would have done, if it became clear my employer was considering letting me go. But I suppose you can’t expect clear thinking from a boy Tony’s age.

He was sitting on a bench near the fountain, hunched over with his elbows propped on his knees, hugging himself. For once he didn’t have his phone in his hands.

When he saw me, Tony stood up and muttered, “Sorry…”

“It’s okay,” I said, patting his shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you into the car, alright?”

He nodded and let me lead him out of the park. I was grateful for the silence, because I hadn’t really considered what I intended to do with Tony once I’d collected him. He’d said on the phone that he didn’t want to go back to his mum’s house, so that left either a hotel or my place. I wasn’t keen on the idea of letting him stay with me, but checking him into a hotel would be too callous, and of course I couldn’t leave him there alone, so I’d have to stay the night in the hotel too. Leaving my house the next morning with Tony would be risky, but leaving a hotel with him would be even worse. I shook my head; there was no good option.

“Are you sick of me?” he said, once he was settled down in the passenger seat.

“Of course not,” I replied immediately, “what on earth makes you think that?”

He closed his eyes and leaned back against the headrest. “Everyone’s sick of me. My Mum’s going to do her nut when she finds out…”

“Tony, what’s happened? What don’t you want her to find out?”

He opened his eyes and looked at me, and just for a moment I had an awful feeling that he _knew_.

“I got sacked,” he said finally, “ _again_. I always do. I only got this job because my Mum knows someone there. What’s she going to say when she finds out I messed this one up as well?” He brought his fist down on his thigh as if he were banging on a table for attention. “She’s going to go mad. She’ll cry, I know she will. She’ll say it’s because of my dad, like she always does, she’ll—”

“Tony, listen,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. He didn’t know, of course he didn’t know. How could he? “Whatever your mum thinks, you haven’t done anything wrong. We’ll sort it all out in the morning, okay? Everything will seem less bleak once you’ve had some sleep.”

“I can’t go back there, James.” He grabbed my arm for emphasis, tight enough it made me wince. “You can’t make me go back there.”

“Of course not.” I smiled, but I kept my eyes on the road. “You can stay with me tonight, and tomorrow we’ll figure out what you want to do next.”

In hindsight it was the worst possible choice I could have made, but at the time it honestly seemed like the only viable option.

He was quiet and subdued for the rest of the journey, but once we pulled into my drive he seemed to perk up a little. It was the first time he’d seen my house, so I suppose he was bound to get a kick out of the increased intimacy.

“This place is huge,” he said, goggling at the third storey. “You must be loaded!”

“Not really,” I laughed. “Back when I bought this, house prices were much lower than they are these days.” Then I told him how little houses had cost back in the nineties, and he looked as if I’d told him I paid for it with magic beans.

We went inside, and once I’d got him settled down on the sofa, I went through to the kitchen to make some coffee.

“Why d’you live on your own, then?” he called out from the living room, loud enough to wake the neighbours. “If you’ve got all this space, why don’t you get a live-in boyfriend to look after the house for you? Must be a right pain doing all the housework and gardening yourself.”

“Lower the volume a bit please, Tony.”

“Sorry,” he said, accepting the cup of coffee from me. “Answer the question, though.”

I shrugged, and sipped my coffee. “Just haven’t met the right young man, I suppose.”

“What, never?” He looked very sceptical. “Not once, in the twenty-odd years you’ve been on the market?”

“Well, it’s not a straightforward matter, Tony. If you’re going to live with someone, you need more than just mutual affection.“

“No, you don’t,” he snorted. “I think that’s just an excuse.”

“And I think you’re too drunk to be having this conversation,” I laughed.

“Sorry,” he said again, and put his cup down. “I should probably go to bed. I mean, you’ve got work in the morning—” He stopped, and I could see his face about to crumple into tears.

“Come on, let’s get you to bed.” I stood up and held my hand out, and when he grasped it, his grip was so tight you’d have thought he was hanging on for dear life.

I put him in my bed, of course, despite not really being ready for that level of closeness. Asking him to sleep in one of the guest rooms would have been too cold, even for me. He seemed overjoyed to finally see my bedroom, and as I looked at the light in his eyes, I thought to myself: _I’ll never be able to deny this boy anything._

“Aren’t you coming to bed too?” he said, as I straightened the duvet around him.

“Yes, in a little while.” I put my hand on his shoulder and stroked it lightly. “I’ve got a bit of work to do first, but I’ll come to bed when I’m done.”

“Will you stay with me until I go to sleep?” He smiled sheepishly. “You know I have trouble sleeping in strange beds.”

“Of course,” I said, stifling a chuckle. Tony had such a macho persona, but if you scratched the surface he was really just a lonely, frightened little boy. “If you like, I can bring my laptop in here and work at the reading desk.”

He beamed at me. “Okay, but if you type too loud I’m going to throw a pillow at you.”


	8. Chapter 8

Having breakfast with Tony the next morning was a glimpse of what could have been, if the world was a kinder place. A good night’s sleep had improved his mood, and as we ate together he was really quite calm, even cheerful. If my employers were just a little more open-minded about these things, he and I could have enjoyed this kind of quiet domestic pleasure from the start.

Much to my relief, Tony decided that the best approach was to go straight home after breakfast. The prospect of confessing to his mother no longer terrified him, although he was still certain the news would upset her.

“She’ll be disappointed,” he said, between bites of cereal, “but she’s probably gotten used to it. I mean, I’ve gotten sacked from every job I’ve ever had, plus I’ve come out to her as four different things in the last five years. She’s got to be desensitised to it by now.”

I envied him a little. I never came out to my parents, I just moved out and cut them off. I left before they had the chance to kick me out—which they almost certainly would have done—so I never had the chance to see the disappointment on their faces when they realised exactly what they’d spawned. I think I would have enjoyed the sight.

“Shouldn’t you ring her? She must be worried, since you didn’t come home last night.”

“Nah,” he laughed. “I told her I was staying over at Aiden’s. He’s a responsible adult _and_ he’s engaged to a woman, so he’s a gold-standard alibi.”

“What a bad boy,” I tutted, and when he grinned at me I couldn’t resist ruffling his hair.

“This is really nice,” he said. “Can we do this again? Spending the night together here, I mean.”

“Definitely,” I said, largely because I couldn’t see a way of backpedalling gracefully. “But preferably without the drinking-in-the-park element, next time.”

It was ten o’clock by the time I’d sent Tony home to his mother, which was far too late to go into work without some kind of excuse. I phoned my manager and told her I was waiting for an emergency plumber to come and fix a burst pipe, and although she seemed sympathetic, I wasn’t entirely sure she believed me. I tried to shake off the uneasiness, but it followed me around for the rest of the day. A guilty conscience can make every little remark seem like a barb or an innuendo. Tony texted me throughout the afternoon, and every time I opened a message from him I worried that a nearby colleague would see it and realise who I was talking to. I shouldn’t have opened them at all, but by that point I had no self-control. Eventually the fear became too much, and I started slipping out to a nearby meeting room to respond to his messages, which I suppose only made my behaviour seem more suspicious.

Very little changed in our routine after Tony’s dismissal, except that I started bringing him home with me after our Friday night excursions. Having said yes to him once, I felt that I could no longer say no. Saturday mornings became the highlight of my week. Yes, of course I enjoyed the Friday night dates and the sex, but increasingly it was the time we spent relaxing together in private that mattered most to me. Those hours we spent in my living room, with Tony stretched out on the sofa and me sitting with his head on my lap, reading or watching television as he played on his phone—they were the most perfect hours I could have imagined. I was always reluctant to let him leave, and he was always reluctant to go. Each week I’d drive him into town, thinking: _why don’t I just turn the car around, and take him back home again?_

But as much as I wanted to keep him with me, circumstances began to drive us apart. I’ve never been sure exactly what gave us away, exactly who spotted us and where. I don’t even know when it happened. All I know is that gradually, rumours began to circulate in the office about exactly why Tony had been let go, and about my role in the decision. I only ever heard snippets. One person speculated that Tony had developed a crush on me, and his supervisor had dismissed him to avoid complications. Another thought that Tony had quit on the spot after having a blazing row with me, which I thought was an especially absurd piece of speculation, since I’d never so much as raised my voice in the office, despite having suffered a great deal of provocation over the years. Another colleague thought that I’d made a pass at Tony, been rebuffed, and then sweet-talked his manager into exacting my revenge by dismissing him. That one would have particularly amused me, if I hadn’t already begun to sense that this was more than just run-of-mill office gossip.

There are rumours, and then there are rumours that the management pay attention to, and this felt distinctly like the latter. I’d taken too many risks, and if I wasn’t careful, I could easily lose my balance. Fortunately for me, in times of crisis I can usually keep a clear head, and this occasion was no different. I’d known when it was time to get Tony sacked, and I knew now that it was time to cut the boy loose altogether. The only question was when to break the news to him, and how.

The approach I settled on was to take Tony out on Friday night as usual, but to have the breakup conversation in the restaurant, before we moved onto the cinema. That way at least he’d have had a good meal—well, good by Tony’s standards—before we went our separate ways. I planned to give him enough money for a taxi home, plus a bit of spending money to smooth things over. The whole thing would be wrapped up by the end of the evening, I thought, and so I intended to go straight home afterwards and arrange a quick hookup, to take my mind off things. But naturally, the evening didn’t quite go as planned.

Even in the car, Tony knew something was wrong. He was never the most observant of boys, but he must have sensed the tension in the air, or perhaps my body language gave it away.

“Something’s up,” he said, as we turned off the motorway and into the outskirts of the city, “you’ve been funny with me all the way here.”

“You’re imagining things,” I replied lightly. “I’m just concentrating on driving.”

“Yeah? Well, you don’t normally.” From the corner of my vision I could see him folding his arms. “ _Normally_ you chat to me while you’re driving.”

“I’m just a little tired, Tony.” This wasn’t too far from the truth, so I added, “it’s been a rough day at work, so you’ll have to forgive me if I’m a bit distracted.”

He shook his head. “You can’t fool me, I know what you’re like when you’ve had a bad day. You complain to me, you don’t give me the silent treatment. So what’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on,” I said, forcing a smile as I glanced at him briefly.

He scoffed. “Yeah, well, I don’t believe you.”

“Tony,” I snapped, “can we please not have this conversation while I’m trying to drive?”

“Oh, so there _is_ a conversation to have, then?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well, you’re not saying much, are you?”

I didn’t know how to respond. Everything had seemed so simple when I planned it out, and now it was going off the rails so rapidly I was struggling to keep my balance. As nonchalantly as I could, I shook my head and chuckled. “I don’t know what’s got into you tonight, Tony. You seem desperate for an argument. Did you have a fight with your mum?”

“Don’t try and throw me off,” he said, “I’m not stupid, I know when you’re trying to distract me. You’re hiding something, I know you are, so why don’t you just admit it?”

 “For god’s sake, Tony,” I snapped, “will you let it drop?” I was so close to boiling point that my hands were shaking.

“Let _what_ drop?” His voice was louder now; he’d scented blood, and I knew he wasn’t going to let go.

“Alright, fine,” I said, “I wanted to bring this up in a kinder way, but since you insist on hashing it out here and now, I was planning to talk to you about our future together.”

“Oh yeah?” His voice was shaking. “And what future’s that then?”

“My point exactly. We don’t _have_ one, Tony. And frankly it’s absurd that either of us ever thought we did.”

My blood felt like acid in my veins. I was absolutely livid, and yet at the same time part of me was detached from all of this, as if I were an observer listening in horror to the bile pouring from my lips. How could I talk to him like this? How could I be so cruel? It was worse than brutal honesty, because I didn’t even mean what I was saying. Whatever would hurt him, whatever would sever his connection to me in one blow, that’s what my mind conjured up.

“You’re dumping me?”

“Yes, Tony. Do you want me to spell it out in words of one syllable?”

“I warned you, James. I told you,” he said, “if you ever walk out on me you’ll be sorry.”

“What?” I gave an empty, rattling laugh. “Are you _threatening_ me? What are you planning to do, tell your mother?”

“You’ll be sorry,” he said again, nodding.

“Oh, that’s it,” I said, slamming the breaks on. “I’ve had quite enough of your nonsense. Get out.”

“What?” He stared at me, eyes wide, nostrils flaring.

“You heard me. _Out_.”

He looked genuinely shocked. “You’re just going to leave me here?”

“Don’t test my patience, Tony,” I said, quietly and calmly. “Get out, before I throw you out.”

He let loose a long stream of expletives which I won’t transcribe here, but he did as he was told and got out of the car. Before he slammed the door behind him, the boy leaned over and said, “I warned you, James. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”


	9. Chapter 9

I drove home on auto-pilot. Lucidity only came back to me when I closed my front door, and the weight of what I’d done seemed to suddenly descend on my shoulders. I had my phone out before I’d even taken my coat off. What I needed, I thought, was a pretty boy to take my mind off Tony. Someone nothing like him. Someone blonde and thin, someone meek, someone who’d never talk back to me. Someone who’d take whatever I wanted to give him and then leave with no fuss. It took me ten minutes to find a good approximation of what I needed, because even when I’m desperate I’m not _that_ desperate, and the boy was at my door twenty minutes later. As soon as I saw his face I knew it wasn’t going to work. I tried to enjoy him, I really did, but I couldn’t even get started, let alone finish. The whole thing was a waste of time. The boy was polite enough as he left, but I almost wished he’d mouthed off at me. I’d gotten used to Tony’s cheek, and now nothing else seemed right.

As I got ready for bed, I cursed myself for ever having gotten involved with Tony. If I’d never succumbed to his charms, I would still be living the same carefree life that had kept me entertained for the last decade. If it wasn’t for Tony, I’d be enjoying random blonde twinks whenever the mood struck me, and those boys would leave my house happy, slightly richer, or both. Tony had spoiled my taste buds. It was as if I’d eaten at one of his beloved fast-food places, and in partaking I’d let myself be robbed of the ability to enjoy anything else. It really all was Tony’s fault, and I cursed the boy vigorously as I lay in bed, waiting for sleep.

When it came, my sleep was light and dreamless. I would probably have woken up naturally after a few hours, if I hadn’t been forcibly awakened first. It took me a few seconds to understand what was happening. The bedroom was dark, but outside I could hear glass smashing, and some kind of dull metallic thudding sound. Overlaying it all was the rhythmic shriek of a car alarm. _My_ car alarm. I knew immediately that it would be Tony’s doing, and for some reason my first instinct was to look at the clock; it was two in the morning, and as I got out of bed I found myself furious, not just that the boy was apparently wrecking my car, but that he’d chosen the middle of the night to do so. It was typical. Tony had no consideration for anyone but himself.

I wrapped a dressing gown around myself, grabbed my keys, and went to the front door.

“Tony, what on earth do you think you’re doing?” I hissed, as I switched off the alarm. “Have you lost your mind?”

He was kicking the one of the front tyres, going at it with such force that he must have been bruising his foot. Shards of glass from two broken side windows lay on the ground around him, and the paintwork was scratched in long, jagged lines. As he stopped what he was doing and turned towards me, I noticed that his hands were bleeding. I shook my head. The stupid boy couldn’t even break a window without hurting himself in the process.

“Don’t you dare call me mad!” Tony shouted. “If I’m mad, whose fault is that? Who picked me up and then dumped me like I was nothing?” His volume got louder and louder, and as he went on he began attacking the car again, more violently now that he had an audience. “I warned you,” he bellowed, “I _warned_ you!”

I was by his side before I knew what I was doing. We were evenly matched physically, but the sheer rage I felt seemed to give me enough extra strength to grab hold of the boy and drag him into the garden. He fought me, fists flailing and heels kicking, but somehow I got him into the house and closed the door behind us. I locked it for good measure, and when I turned to face Tony he was hunched over and panting, but there was a smile on his face.

“Now you’ll pay attention to me, won’t you?” he said, triumphantly. “I _knew_ it.”

I shoved him up against the wall and held him there, pinned under my body, shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip. His hands smeared blood across the wallpaper as he pushed back against me. I could hear his ragged breathing, I could feel his heart pounding. It wasn’t enough. I wanted him, and I wanted him to suffer.

“I knew it,” he kept saying, as I dragged him into the living room. “I knew it.”

I held him down over the coffee table and fucked him, and as I ground his face into the table-top he kept laughing, even his groans sounded like laughter, and that only made me angrier. I had one arm twisted up behind his back, but the other was free. He was touching himself, goading me, egging me on, telling me to keep going, to do it harder, to hurt him. I couldn’t stand the sound, so I clamped my hand over his mouth, and that seemed to drive him over the edge. He bit my palm as he came, and in retaliation I wrenched his arm up so high he yelped like a dog, and that, _that_ was what I wanted, that abject pain and fear, that suffering, which he’d had coming to him for such a long time.

“D’you feel better now?” he said afterwards, grinning at me over his shoulder. “I do.”

I couldn’t speak. I just held him. He leaned back against me, resting his head on my shoulder, and closed his eyes.

“James,” he said, quietly. “I meant what I said, though. Don’t try and dump me again.”


	10. Chapter 10

When Tony left the next morning, we said goodbye as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. He didn’t even glance at my car as he got into the taxi I’d called. For Tony I think these rages were like the weather, totally out of his control; if you got caught without an umbrella, it was your own fault, and certainly nothing worth remarking on.

Once he was gone, I sat at my kitchen table and tried to plan my next step. What I really wanted was to keep seeing the boy, but the rumours already circulating at work precluded that. The only way of keeping Tony in my life would be to leave my job, and that was obviously not an option. Only a fool sacrifices a comfortable position for the sake of a boy, even one you feel you can’t do without. So the only avenue available was to end the relationship, but how do you proceed when the other party won’t let go? A cis man might have gotten the police involved, since there was enough property damage to get them interested, but of course that wasn’t something I was willing to consider. I might be capable of a certain amount of ruthlessness, but even I wouldn’t set the police on another trans man.

It was an intractable problem. Even if it wasn’t strictly impossible, the situation wasn’t going to be resolved quickly. It needed careful consideration, and in order to buy myself enough time to think things through thoroughly, I needed to keep Tony happy. So, I made my decision. I would keep seeing the boy, at least until I’d found a way out. Perhaps it would take a few days, perhaps a few weeks, but I was sure I’d have the Tony problem solved one way or another before the year was out.

And I suppose in a way, I was right. The problem was solved, but not by me. A couple of weeks had gone by since the car incident, and I’d begun to relax. I still hadn’t thought of a way to divest myself of Tony smoothly, but I was sure that the solution would come to me eventually. I’d even started to feel more sanguine about being the subject of the office gossip; give it a few months, I thought, and it would all blow over. Something else would capture people’s attention, and those rumours concerning me would be old news. So when my manager called me into an unplanned meeting one Monday morning, I assumed she had an urgent work problem to discuss.

“Well, James,” she said, “there’s no pleasant way of broaching this topic, I’m afraid.”

I nodded and tried to keep an open, relaxed smile on my face.

Her expression was absolutely neutral. “I assume you’re aware of the rumours circulating about you.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, still smiling. They were silly rumours, and my reaction had to emphasise their absurdity.

“Unfortunately, so are the senior leadership team.”

“Oh.” The smile froze on my face, but behind it I was floundering. No-one at that level should be aware of my _name_ , let alone the content of salacious gossip about me. “Well, that’s—”

“Let me stop you there,” she said, putting her hand up. “I don’t intend to get into the details of what may or may not have happened.” The barely-stifled disgust was quite plain in her tone. “What I do want to say is that the rumours alone are a significant problem for SLT.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding.

“And obviously after last year’s incident, the Chief Exec is very sensitive to anything which might get us in the papers again. Now, personally, I think SLT is being a bit over-cautious on this particular matter, but their priority is to mitigate these risks before they develop into problems. We can’t really blame them for that, can we?”

“No,” I said, struggling to understand where this was going. “No, I suppose not.”

“Well,” she said, smiling, “I’m glad we’re on the same page. Now, you’ll also be aware that the voluntary redundancy scheme was re-opened a few months ago.”

I wasn’t, as it happens, but I kept smiling and nodding.

“Excellent.” Her posture relaxed just slightly, as if she’d been expecting a fight. “In that case, I’d encourage you to put an application in as soon as possible. Once HR have received it, SLT will get your application fast-tracked, and you’ll leave with the full package. Of course, we’ll waive the usual notice period. You should plan to leave at the end of the month.”

I was still nodding, more slowly now as the reality of the situation began to dawn on me. They were forcing me out. Discarding me as callously as they’d discarded Tony. They didn’t even want me around for the three-month notice period.

“Now, I know it’s a lot to take in,” my manager said, “but try to see this as an opportunity, James—take some time off, get some distance, maybe re-evaluate things. I’m sure when you’re ready to return to work, you’ll have no trouble finding a suitable position.” _Somewhere else_ , the smile on her face said, _because you’ll never work here again_.

I took the afternoon off, with my manager’s blessing, to think things over. Of course, there was no decision to make. Leaving with a redundancy package versus being dismissed for misconduct, that’s no choice at all. As galling as it was, I would have to take redundancy. I just had to get used to the idea.

I went straight home, but even in my own house I couldn’t relax, couldn’t settle. In the old days I would have arranged a hookup to burn off some anxious energy, but that medicine had lost its efficacy, so instead I turned to the only thing that seemed to work.

“Are you alright?” Tony said, sounding genuinely concerned. “You never actually _ring_ me, have you been in an accident or something?”

“No, nothing like that.” I said, laughing awkwardly. “I just… I’ve had some bad news, and I suppose I wanted to talk to someone.”

“Why, what’s happened?”

“I’m losing my job,” I said, wincing at the feeling of the words on my lips. “They’re not sacking me exactly, they’re forcing me to take redundancy.”

“So you’re getting a payoff?” the boy said, without missing a beat.

“Yes, it should be about twenty grand, I think.”

“Yeah? Well, I got one week’s wages when they sacked me, which is about three hundred pounds after tax.”

“I’m sorry, Tony,” I said, aghast at how low his hourly rate must have been. “I’m being insensitive. I shouldn’t be complaining to you about this kind of thing.”

“Are you kidding?” he laughed, and the sound seemed to fill the room with warmth, as if he was standing there beside me. “You complain to me about _everything_ , why’s this any different?”

“Listen, Tony,” I said, suddenly needing to see his face, “are you free right now?”

“I’m at Aiden’s,” he said, “but I can come over if you want. I can get a taxi and be there in, like, half an hour.”

“Yes, please.” I sounded pathetic, but oddly I found that I didn’t really care.

“Great,” he said, and then after a moment’s pause, “James?”

“Yes?”

“Now that you’ve lost your job, there’s nothing in the way of us being together anymore, is there?”

I’d like to say that I could see a rosy future together for Tony and I, but the truth is that I couldn’t imagine being unemployed, let alone finding another job and pursuing a relationship with Tony at the same time. The future was formless and grey. I wondered if I was in shock. But regardless, the boy was absolutely right—every obstacle had been removed, and now I could see Tony whenever I wanted. Perhaps I should have felt liberated, but to be quite honest I just felt numb.

“No,” I said, “I suppose there isn’t.”


End file.
